Sunday, April 4, 2010

Benedito: "The signatures won't be a problem"

Barcelona presidential candidate Agustí Benedito gave an interview to Catalan local radio station Radio Cabrera and Catalan online sports paper Yoya.

It is true that you're against the sale of assets and specifically against the sale of the Miniestadi?The truth is that I'm concerned about some decisions that the board has lately taken regarding the sale of assets because this that our assets' solvency ratio has become worse. Three times they have sold parts of our assets. I'm not in favour of this, it should only happen when we're facing a very difficult situation and I think that is not the case now. I'm heavily opposed and I think that the other candidates have a different idea.

But do you think a reform of the Camp Nou is necessary?The Camp Nou is 53 years old and needs a reform regarding accesses, comfort, new technologies and we will do it during the next mandate. Another, very different thing is having reform of a football pitch that can be seen from the moon.

A theme that regularly comes back in these elections, is the relationschip Barça-politics. What is your opinion?The Catalan character of Barcelona is part of its essence. Whoever wants to reduce this Catalan character, no matter who it is, will fail. But the president should not do politics and this has been one of the big mistakes of Laporta. One thing is to help Catalonia club through the club and another thing is to use it in a party-politcal way. And besides that, Laporta is doing it for his personal benefit, betraying the spirit and the pact he had with the club members in 2003.

Having been, back in the days, so close and loyal to Laporta, how is it possible that you never were part of the board of directors? You rejected or it was never offered to you?Honestly, since Laporta was elected as president Laporta he never talked with me about the possibility of joining the board. Other directors did tell me that they wanted me to become part of the board but Laporta never proposed it to me, so I didn't have the choice to say yes or no. Likewise, this fact did not stop me from working for Barça with all I had until the last day.

Could it be that your biggest signing is not a player? I'm talking about your campaign director, Mr. Xavier Roig...Yeah, right, he is a great professional and I am very happy with the collaboration agreement we have signed. He has a great cv, also in the Barça elections, since he was Laporta's campaign director in 2003. He will not be the only signing of this nature, I will bit by bit release names that people will certainly like a lot.

Let's try, can you already give us a name?The campaign hasn't started yet... It's precisely Xavier Roig who has advised me that these names should be brought to the public gradually.

How are you planning the collection of the signatures, are you optimistic?What we have is like a "movement", today we don't get the same attention in the mainstream media as other candidates, but we are with many people, many people are working on this, many club members have contacted us to help us. There will be more than 1, 2 or 3 candidates that will have more difficulties than us to pass the cut of the signatures. We will go over it and it won't be a problem for us, we will have other problems but not this one.

this was the second and last part of this interview. you can read the first part here.